


Wildfire

by whimsical_ramblings



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Drama, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Paranoia, Psychological Drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:32:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsical_ramblings/pseuds/whimsical_ramblings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ocelot didn’t think himself capable of guilt anymore, but nine years of waiting gives you a lot of time to think. Takes place post-GZ and pre-TPP. Rating may go up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Ocelot’s first impression of Kazuhira Miller was that he was stronger than he looked. Covered in bruises and bandages, chest heaving and legs shaking as he struggled to pull himself from his hospital-issued wheelchair, it seemed as though a strong wind could blow him over. Ocelot only made it halfway through that thought, however, before the man lunged at him, throwing all of his weight into a punch that cracked sharply against Ocelot’s jaw.The force sent him stumbling backwards, his head whipping painfully to the side, and he rubbed at his jawline with calloused fingers, the familiar copper taste of blood hot on his tongue.

Kaz sank bonelessly back into the chair, his fingers digging into the armrests, the knuckles on his right hand slightly bruised as he looked over at the body lying prone on the bed next to him, as quiet and motionless as it’d been every day for the past week.  Ocelot straightened, stretched out his neck, and wiped at the corner of his mouth. The back of his hand came back red.

“That how you great everyone when you first meet them?” he asked. “Or just me?”

Kaz’s mouth twisted into a grimace, strands of blond hair hanging in his eyes and clinging to the back of his neck.

“We trusted you,” he said, voice tight as he fought to breathe. His eyes, red and bloodshot from lack of sleep, were still trained on the bed. John lay as still as ever, undisturbed by the noise.

Ocelot wondered briefly if Kaz was lying, or if he was just stupid enough to believe his own words. John didn’t trust him. He didn’t trust anyone. The man had been looking over his shoulder ever since Tselinoyarsk, waiting for the next defection, the next betrayal. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe he trusted too much. Maybe the only person John never truly trusted was him. He let his guard down every now and then, sure, for the occasional transfer of information, or the occasional mission, or the occasional fuck. But it wasn’t trust, regardless of what Ocelot did to try and change that. Still, Kaz seemed to think differently.

Ocelot’s eyes lingered on John’s still form for a moment, kept alive by the various beeping and hissing of machines that left his ears ringing.

“You don’t see anything wrong with that? Trusting me?” he asked. Kaz didn’t answer, and Ocelot’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t even know me.”

“Snake trusted you, so I trusted you,” Kaz bit out, turning to look at him. “It’s funny, huh? How both of us are alive? The two people Snake trusted most?”

Ocelot glared at him, but Kaz continued anyway.

“MSF and everyone in it is at the bottom of the damn ocean,” he said, his words wavering, as though his tongue was still struggling to wrap itself around the idea. “But you’re alive. And so am I. What’s that look like to you?”

Ocelot scoffed, shoving his hands into the pockets of his slacks. Both of them knew Kaz was just looking for a scapegoat, someone he could blame besides himself. He’d had limited contact with the man before now, that was true, but Ocelot knew what denial looked like. He’d seen it enough times in the mirror.

His eyes wandered over to John again, his face a mess of scars, bandages swathing most of his visible skin, and a pit of anger welled up inside him. Maybe it was seeing John like this, or maybe it was Kaz’s ignorant insistence that John had more faith in him that he originally thought, that he could have done something to stop this mess. Maybe it was the prickling sensation at the back of his mind telling him that Kaz was right. He wasn’t sure. Complex emotions were something Ocelot never really understood, at least when it came to himself. And yet he found himself plagued with them more often than he cared to admit.

“You could both stand to trust a little less,” Ocelot said, failing to keep the bite out of his voice. “Maybe things would be different.”

He made to leave, catching a glimpse of Kaz’s face as he fought to hold his emotions together before turning around, the dull thud of something colliding violently with the door echoing through the outside hall as it shut behind him. 


	2. Chapter 2

_England, three months later_

“You think Zero did it?”

EVA’s voice sounded distant over the radio, tired and hollow, almost mechanical as it traveled through the transceiver. She’d changed over the last few years, hardening as though she was building a cocoon around herself. Still, she was loyal enough, and the only person left working for the Patriots that Ocelot trusted to get information from. Or Cipher, as it was now called. An encryption, a part of Zero’s desperate attempt to hide himself away. 

 

“I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised,” Ocelot said. “He’s got enough proxy organizations at his fingertips to get the job done, that’s for sure.”

“Then he wants Snake dead,” EVA mused.

“He wants something,” Ocelot said, sifting through the papers in his lap. He was seated in the passenger’s side of an old Ford Cortina, files spread carefully—face down—on the driver’s seat while he scanned over the ones in front of him. He was parked several miles away from the hospital in the hopes that none of Zero’s eyes would see him prowling through his documents, although he knew better than anyone that there was no guarantee he wasn’t being watched. He’d already swept the car for bugs, but the nagging feeling that someone’s eyes were trained on him was one Ocelot knew all too well.

“Whatever that something is,” Ocelot continued, “he’s hiding it pretty damn well.”

“Too well for you, even?” she asked, and Ocelot could almost see her thin-lipped smirk through the radio. He scowled. Maybe there was more of the old EVA inside of her than he’d originally thought.

“I thought you knew everything,” she continued when Ocelot didn’t answer her.

“I never said that,” he snapped.

EVA, laughed, the sound altogether humorless, her breath crackling with static. “You could’ve fooled me.”

Ocelot slapped the papers he was holding against his knee, the fingers of his other hand gripping the radio with white knuckles. “Did you agree to this fucked up traitorous séance just to be a bitch?” he snarled. The hair at the nape of his neck prickled, his throat running dry, and he struggled to get his emotions in check. He sensed his patience waning, and for a moment he felt twenty years old again, wet behind the ears and filled to the brim with an energy that sometimes overflowed into rage, or excitement, or even sex. But that was in the past. He was in control now. He was always in control. He wouldn’t be some overenthusiastic puppy dog trailing behind his betters, not anymore. He was too good for that.

“Now you’re starting to sound more like yourself,” EVA said, and Ocelot’s scowl only deepened. She always knew what to say to get under his skin.

“Speak for yourself,” Ocelot said, slowly slipping back into the comfortable cool demeanor that, at age 31, still didn’t quite fit him. “When did you become practically frigid.”

There was a pause on the other end of the radio, followed by a quiet intake of breath.

“When do you think?” she asked.

Ocelot rubbed his eyes, his mind flashing back to the sterile hospital rooms, the ultrasounds, to EVA’s stomach swelling with a promise none of them could keep, and the empty look in her eyes when it was taken away from her.

“You really wanna dig up this dead horse and beat it some more?” he asked, feeling the weight of those long nine months for the first time in years.

“No,” she answered firmly. Then, without stopping to pause, she asked, “How’s Snake?”

“The same,” Ocelot said. His mind filled with more images, of days spent outside the concrete walls of the hospital, the hissing of the machines on the days he actually went in, and his nose burned with the memory of the stale smell of disinfectant that clung to the insides of the building.

“And Zero’s keeping you there to babysit him, what, indefinitely?” EVA asked. “What’s his game?”

“He’s not saying,” Ocelot asked, eyes flickering back to the papers in his lap. “He doesn’t trust me enough to tell me the details. That’s why you’re here.”

EVA scoffed. “He doesn’t trust much of anyone these days.”

“But he trusts you more,” Ocelot pointed out. He sat up a bit straighter, peering out the window to look around for a moment, then ducked his head down in front of the dashboard. “Find out what you can. That’s all I need from you. He’s planning something, and whatever it is, keeping Snake alive has something to do with it. I want to know why.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” EVA said. “You have fun with guard duty in the meantime. We both know you enjoy it.”

Ocelot opened his mouth to rebuff her, but before he could get out a word, her signal cut out. He cursed, shuffling the papers back into a pile and sliding over to the driver’s seat. He started up the car while EVA’s words rang in his head, mixed with Kaz’s accusations from all those weeks ago, until they collided with each other to form a continuous loop between his ears.

_I thought you knew everything._

_We trusted you._

_Snake trusted you._

_It’s funny huh?_

_I thought you knew everything._

Ocelot slammed on the gas.


	3. Chapter 3

Ocelot didn’t know exactly when the dreams had started. He couldn’t remember the tipping point, the night he’d gone to sleep free of dreams or the night he’d woken up in a cold sweat, shaking, feeling as though his stomach was trying to work it’s way out of his body. After a while they all just started to blend together, the sleepless nights, the mornings spent at the bottom of a cold shower. It was just a part of his life now, and it wasn’t until he met up with Kaz again for the first time in over three years that he realized just how true that was.

They met in one of the less-busy parks on the east side of London and Kaz, sitting with one arm thrown over the back of a bench, actually took his sunglasses off when Ocelot approached him.

“Holy shit,” he said, squinting against the sun. “You look horrible.”

Ocelot watched him put his sunglasses back on, and felt the fingers on his right hand twitch as Kaz stood up from the bench.

“And you’re still an asshole,” he said without any real conviction. “What else is new.”

He couldn’t see Kaz’s eyes behind the glasses but he knew exactly where they were looking. The tired lines on his face, the bags under his eyes, the slumped position of his shoulders. Ocelot knew how he must’ve looked to him, and without thinking he straightened up a bit. Kaz gestured to the right with his head.

“Let’s walk,” he said, and strode off with his hands in his pockets. Ocelot followed him.

“This better be worth my time,” Ocelot said callously. Kaz scoffed.

“You really think I’d come all the way out there if it wasn’t?” he asked.

Ocelot chose not to answer, bringing a hand up to shield his face against the sun filtering through the trees. It was curiosity more than anything that had led him to accept Kaz’s offer to meet with him. There’d been nothing but silence on his end for years, and after their last meeting, Ocelot had assumed that the two of them would go their separate ways for the rest of the foreseeable future.

“Spit it out then,” Ocelot said. He could hear the irritability in his own voice and scowled. Lack of sleep had done nothing for his mood, and even though Ocelot had never been the best at practicing restraint, he was finding it more and more difficult to hold on to the remains of his patience.

If Kaz noticed he made no mention of it. He seemed preoccupied with his own thoughts, lost in whatever it was he was about to say.

“I wanna rebuild,” he said.

Ocelot’s heart sped up. Kaz didn’t need to clarify what it was that he wanted to rebuild. It was obvious enough.

_Motherbase._

“I think it’s what he would have wanted,” Kaz continued. “We all worked so hard to make it what it was. If he ever comes out of it...I want him to have somewhere to go back to.” 

“And what does that have to do with me?” Ocelot asked.

Kaz turned to look at him.

“You serious?” he asked. “I don’t know what planet you live on, but whether or not you choose see it, we’re the only two people still alive that care enough about what he wants to do this.”

Ocelot remembered Kaz saying something similar the last time they’d met. The two people Snake trusted most, he’d said.

“And what makes you think you know what he wants, huh?” Ocelot asked.

“What makes you think you do?” Kaz snapped back. Ocelot could feel the frustration coming off of him like waves, but after a few moments he sighed, and his shoulders sagged.

“You weren’t there. You didn’t see him when it happened.,” Kaz said. “It was like the fight had gone out of him.”

Ocelot struggled to picture such a look on John’s face. John had always been immovable, unstoppable, and in all the years they’d known each other Ocelot had never seen him give up on anything. He was starting to wonder if the John he knew and the John Kaz knew were two different people.

Regardless, Ocelot couldn’t leave England. Even leaving the city would be suicide, and with Zero’s trust in him as frail as it was, Ocelot couldn’t risk giving away any indication that he might be planning to defect.

“You’re on your own,” he decided. Kaz halted in the middle of the path.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re on your own,” Ocelot said again. “I don’t have any time to give to your little pet project.

“Bullshit,” Kaz said. Ocelot shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. 

“What exactly do you plan to do with this venture when it’s finished, anyway?” he asked, striding up to Kaz. “Just pick up where you left off? Build an army? Why? And what makes you think you’ll even get that far?”

Kaz scowled at him as he got closer, but Ocelot held his ground.

“Trust me when I tell you that there are eyes on you, Kaz. If I were you, I’d tread carefully.”

“You know it’s what he’d want,” Kaz said, his voice tight. He took a couple steps back, then turned around and continued his way up the path. “When you’re done being Zero’s errand boy be sure to let me know.”

Ocelot clenched his jaw until it hurt, and the last barrier holding his temper in place broke apart at the accusation.

“Fuck you, Kaz!” he yelled to Kaz’s back. He continued to watch him walk away until he left his line of sight, and something sharp, something that felt more like guilt than Ocelot cared to admit, started to pull at his chest. 


End file.
